Within the span of 38 days, two of the world’s largest technology firms — Amazon and now Google — have been named as potential bidders for yet-to-be divested assets from Sprint, which is desperate to close its 14-month quest to be acquired by T-Mobile. During the waning hours of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, the New York Post reported that Google was in talks to partner with Dish Network on creating a fourth nationwide carrier, but Google forcefully denies the story.

“These claims are simply false. Google is not having any conversations with Dish about creating a wireless network,” a Google spokesperson wrote in response to questions from SDxCentral.

The unnamed source that floated the rumor about Google’s involvement is misinformed or intentionally leaking bad information, says Roger Entner, founder and lead analyst at Recon Analytics. There is zero credibility to Google’s reported involvement with Sprint assets, he explains.

“If [Google] had wanted to be successful in wireless, they would have put resources behind Google Fi,” Entner said, referring to the mobile virtual network operator that Google established in 2015 to sell wireless service.

The widely dismissed report arrived just days after T-Mobile US appeared to have a deal in place, with the blessing of the Justice Department, to sell assets to Dish and secure regulatory approval for its $26.5 billion merger with Sprint.

“Right now the mostly likely case is Dish” but it is not the only serious bidder, Entner said. Dish Network co-founder and Chairman Charlie Ergen is a notoriously difficult executive to come to terms with, he explained.

“You only have a deal with [Ergen] if there is no other choice. He has had signature-ready contracts with three of the four carriers (Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint) and every time they were about to sign he wanted to have something more because the negotiations weren’t over in his mind,” Entner said.

Much of the interest has focused on Dish of late because of its weakened position in the market, Entner explained. Cable operators and other interested parties could have more resources to invest in building a viable nationwide network, but it’s not in T-Mobile’s best interest to create a strong competitor as it vies to close the deal with Sprint.

“Dish doesn’t have money to invest. Dish, from a T-Mobile perspective and also from an AT&T and Verizon perspective, is the best possible choice because it’s the weakest competitor,” Entner said. “If you have to recreate a fourth competitor, let’s pick one that has a crappy business model and is about to lose money because linear television is about to die.”

Dish also owns large swaths of unused wireless spectrum license and it is under pressure to fulfill requirements to complete the first phase of its 5G network by March 2020. The company has been accumulating spectrum licenses for many years, including AWS-4 spectrum and spectrum in the 2 GHz range. The company is currently facing a deadline to cover 70% of the population in the 176 markets where it has AWS-4 spectrum licenses by March 2020.

Indeed, less than three months ago Ergen was still discussing plans to power its 5G network using virtualization and software to differentiate itself and create an advantage over incumbent providers that are still tethered to hardware-based systems. At the time Ergen admitted that Dish has nothing in place for a 5G network today, but said the company plans to launch a narrowband IoT (Narrowband Internet Of Things (NB-IOT)) network within a year, followed by a 5G network based on the not-yet-released 3GPP Release 16 standard.